Rick Steves' French, Italian & German Phrase Book

I took the Italian section of this book with me on a two-week backpacking trip through Italy. It was highly-useful, especially in the restaurants. It's well-organized with all the phrases you'll need. The "Menu Decoder" section is great for looking up words in a dictionary format. Since I was traveling light and only needed the Italian section, I cut the book into three parts and bound each with duct tape. Now I have three phrase books!

Rick Steves' phrasebook was my best friend during a recent three- month tour of Europe. This book is perfectly written for the budget traveler with clear pronounciations and slices of Rick Steves' humor that his readers have come to love. The book even includes a bit of a "script" for reserving a hotel room over the phone by including the exact phrases in the logical order. Thanks to the book, I was able to eat well in Nice, sleep cheap in Provence, chase the casanovas away in Florence and much more. Overall, this book is probably not essential for those who are only traveling in major cities where travelers are apt to find plenty of English spoken. However, this book is a bible in small towns where no English is spoken. In addition, the book helped me to show most locals that I was taking an interest in their language and not making the assumption that others could speak mine. As a reward, I believe that people were more helpful, more likely to carry on a conversation with me and, when applicable, more likely to respond in English. This was especially true in Paris.

Easy to find what you are looking for. Has all of the truly importaint words and phrases. I think that the food translations were used the most, by me and anyone else that figured out I had this book. You really do not need a phrase book if you are traveling from big city to big city, but if you find yourself in a small village or town, this book will be very handy. If you want a phrase book, this is the one. Next time I take off over seas, this book will make its way into my backpack.

The book is simply THE BEST phrase book out there! It has all the words and phrases that anyone would ever need. It's not packed with 90 plus pages of banking phrases like all the other phrase books, the info in here is actually very useful. Rick Steves has a very good sense of humor and he incorporates that into the book. He even teaches you the dirty words. I definately recommend this book to anyone travelling in these countries.

I brought this language dictionary with me on my two month trip through Europe, and thought it was great. Rick includes translations for all the basic phrases - "where is the hotel?" and"I'm allergic to penicillin" - but also translates more unique phrases not in other dictionaries, which I found to be quite useful when conversing with new friends. When a friend and I, who speak no Italian, were seated next to two Italian guys (who spoke no english) at a restaurant in Florence, we were able to carry on a pretty lively conversation, thanks to Rick's fun phrase translations. That meal was the best one I had on the entire trip! Also, a menu decoder proved itself invaluable when ordering in restaurants. (And since I'm a vegetarian, it was especially helpful - it would've been terrible if I'd ordered "caprese" (mozarella & tomato salad) and gotten "capra" (goat) instead!) This is a great book to travel with, especially if you're hitting a number of countries.